1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to processing data that is transmitted by a transmitter that utilizes a first clock, and received by a receiver that utilizes a second clock. The process described herein is particularly well-suited for employment in an audio system that involves a distribution of digitized audio signals over a local area network (LAN) to speakers that are distributed in different physical locations. Such a LAN may be implemented, for example, as an Ethernet-based LAN using CAT-5 and/or CAT-6 cable, or any other packet based distribution medium, wired or wireless.
2. Description of the Related Art
In currently available packet-based distribution systems, similar issues are addressed using hardware technologies such as a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) or long data buffers. However, such technologies increase the cost of the electronics required to achieve satisfactory results.
Although the VCO solution may permit individual channels to be synchronized within a couple of milliseconds, buffered solutions cannot achieve this precision, and eventually, synchronization loss could occur between channels.
There are also carrier-based, e.g., radio frequency, synchronization signals in use, but these also require more costly and complex VCO circuits to be implemented.
Furthermore these techniques may introduce considerable unpredictable jitter due to employment of phase locked loop (PLL) circuits, causing degradation of audio quality.